I'm thinking that most of this hatred of SMS should be directed towards the creator, rather than the character, because the character is an apparent product of the inadequacy of the ideas and skills of the creator. In other words, the real problem is the creator.

I imagine it's pretty easy to dislike both of them interchangeably. But to be fair, I haven't seen the user in ages.

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Originally Posted by frozenLake

(I mean, Darkspine Sonic is basically the same exact thing, recolor and all, except they get less hate because they are canon.)

Honestly, I feel part of the issue with the "hate" is the idea that people seem to consider SMS an OC. While I mean, sure, that is somewhat true, the thing is, they are still /meant/ to be Sonic... just a horribly overpowered, recolor form of him. And considering the concept was meant to amplify what sonic already has (speed), the way it handles completely fits the original concept.

Honestly whether SMS is an "OC" (whatever that means anymore) is not relevant to most of the issues here. It's just bad regardless of what SMS the character actually is.

That said, I know very little about Darkspine Sonic, so I can't express many thoughts on him. That is, except for questions I have about why Sonic needed yet another alternate super form or whatever it is.

I have a feeling that starting this thread was a huge mistake, because nearly everyone involved has just been extremely narrow-minded about their perspectives on the mere idea of SMS having even the slightest bit of potential, even if said potential is centered around things like helping people learn how to edit the sprites of and/or nerf a character wad by using SMS as a base for the tutorial. There should have been a level pack designed to challenge those who play as him, just to show how difficult we can make things for whatever SMS players are left(if applicable).

It's because you're under the mistaken impression that SMS has any kind of potential. The only editing lesson to be learned from SMS is what not to do. It serves as a warning to others. There's no way to redeem any part of it.

Why would SMS specifically be a base for a tutorial? There are better examples nowadays, for instance the 2.2 Sonic sprites aka F Sonic, or Chuckles. Spriting tutorials are included on our Discord's #spriting channel to help people out, and well known spriters themselves frequent there who can help people out AFAIK.

SMS as he was last released wasn't exactly special on his own anyway. IIRC he also included sprite replacements for some enemies (the crawlas lost their tracks and turned yellow for instance), and included a special stage with all 7 emeralds collectable to allow access to super easily.

I wouldn't be surprised if that special stage might have been a factor in SMS's popularity back in the day, at least apart from SMS himself.

It's because you're under the mistaken impression that SMS has any kind of potential. The only editing lesson to be learned from SMS is what not to do. It serves as a warning to others. There's no way to redeem any part of it.

From my personal experience, there's no such thing as something that has no potential, and anything can be at least partly redeemed, as long as it isn't evil-incarnate in every possible way. At least I'm trying not to be a complete pessimist about this.

This isn't pessimism. There are plenty of great characters to play in this community, from the three vanilla characters to the large variety of characters you can find for download on the forums. You've decided to latch onto the worst option to champion, and you shouldn't be surprised that the rest of the community disagrees with your interest.

Unfounded optimism is just as bad as complete pessimism. A turd will always be a piece of feces. SMS has such a negative reputation because of his lack of quality. No matter how much you believe in your heart otherwise, SMS is "hated" because he's simply bad in every way. It has nothing to do with any other reason.

I always liked some of his sprites. Like the On-the-edge sprite and angled running sprite. I didn’t really care about his overpowered abilities because it was something different (and at the same time ridiculous) to me and that’s what made it fun for me personally.

You also tend to like something the more you are exposed to it via the mere exposure effect. A lot of servers I played on had SMS back in the day. I had never really seen abilities like his before. Now however, the only ability I find somewhat unique is his rocket wall-jump ability (Thok against a wall to shoot straight up); and even that move is unbalanced since you literally just need to hit a wall and you get more air than a red spring.

I still find SMS fun to play if I just want to screw around. If anything, SMS is as big of a joke wad to me as HMS is. They’re both hilariously ridiculous to play in the game.

From my personal experience, there's no such thing as something that has no potential, and anything can be at least partly redeemed, as long as it isn't evil-incarnate in every possible way. At least I'm trying not to be a complete pessimist about this.

I think you're trying too hard to defend your position.

It's like I said before, you could turn SMS into something interesting if you really tried. But for the same amount of effort, you could honestly create something just as good from scratch. Really; it's not hard to use the paintbrush and colorfill tool in paint.

I mean, you're allowed to enjoy it. Sonic R is a terrible game, but I still occasionally play it for some goddamn reason.

From my personal experience, there's no such thing as something that has no potential, and anything can be at least partly redeemed, as long as it isn't evil-incarnate in every possible way. At least I'm trying not to be a complete pessimist about this.

Your experience may very well be limited in scope, it's not a justification for saying SMS has potential.

I don't think you understand the underlying problem here. SMS, at its core, is about having a ridiculously overpowered character that trivializes every aspect of the game. This is boring. It is absurdly bad design to take everything that makes the game fun and interesting, and make all of it completely irrelevant. This is completely counter to good character and game design. When something's design is completely counter to the purpose of the thing it's being made for, that is, by definition, bad, unsalvageable design. It's irredeemable because it is not congruent with the game's design, and completely counters all of it. And this is before getting into the nitty grittys of the shit quality of the sprites.

Nobody is saying you can't have fun with SMS, but that fun is entirely subjective. It is not based on any metric you can use to assess good design. Lots of people fun playing with things they know are awful. But many of those people will tell you that they're aware of how awful what they're doing is and won't justify it. SMS definitely fits in the category of "Something people can have fun with but has no objective merit". This is not pessimism. This is an analysis of the material presented to us.

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I mean, you're allowed to enjoy it. Sonic R is a terrible game, but I still occasionally play it for some goddamn reason.

Your experience may very well be limited in scope, it's not a justification for saying SMS has potential.

I don't think you understand the underlying problem here. SMS, at its core, is about having a ridiculously overpowered character that trivializes every aspect of the game. This is boring. It is absurdly bad design to take everything that makes the game fun and interesting, and make all of it completely irrelevant. This is completely counter to good character and game design. When something's design is completely counter to the purpose of the thing it's being made for, that is, by definition, bad, unsalvageable design. It's irredeemable because it is not congruent with the game's design, and completely counters all of it. And this is before getting into the nitty grittys of the shit quality of the sprites.

Nobody is saying you can't have fun with SMS, but that fun is entirely subjective. It is not based on any metric you can use to assess good design. Lots of people fun playing with things they know are awful. But many of those people will tell you that they're aware of how awful what they're doing is and won't justify it. SMS definitely fits in the category of "Something people can have fun with but has no objective merit". This is not pessimism. This is an analysis of the material presented to us.

It's something to do while listening to the soundtrack, of course =P

first of all, I'm not trying to "justify saying SMS has potential". Second, just because something isn't congruent with one game's design and/or completely counters it, doesn't make it irredeemable; someone just needs to try modding it into a significantly different game and see if it does better in that, or better yet, make an entirely new game that better utilizes it. Third, I don't see why everybody uses "shit" in place of "bad", because it just makes them sound ignorant and unreasonably far-gone in stupidity, regardless of context. Finally, It doesn't matter what terms are used to describe this series of responses; it is all overly negative to the point of redundancy.

I believe every wad that can be ported or updated for the newest version that hasn't already had that done to it should at least be given an opportunity to be ported or updated, so people don't have to waste a bunch of HD space installing a bunch of significantly outdated releases just to use them.

I believe every wad that can be ported or updated for the newest version that hasn't already had that done to it should at least be given an opportunity to be ported or updated, so people don't have to waste a bunch of HD space installing a bunch of significantly outdated releases just to use them.

On the contrary; I'm quite glad I don't have to waste precious hard drive space on a port of a character with significantly outdated release quality.

On the contrary; I'm quite glad I don't have to waste precious hard drive space on a port of a character with significantly outdated release quality.

what do you think would take up more space? Needing an extra copy of the game just to be able to play as older characters or being able to play as any previously available characters you choose to download with only one copy of the game?

Second, just because something isn't congruent with one game's design and/or completely counters it, doesn't make it irredeemable; someone just needs to try modding it into a significantly different game and see if it does better in that, or better yet, make an entirely new game that better utilizes it.

Then what's the argument here? We were talking about why SMS is bad in SRB2. SMS being bad doesn't mean we need to literally redesign our game around him. If you want to see that, then go put him into another game. I doubt there's anyone left in this community that even wants to touch SMS anymore.

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Originally Posted by Soulman Model CE

Third, I don't see why everybody uses "shit" in place of "bad", because it just makes them sound ignorant and unreasonably far-gone in stupidity, regardless of context. Finally, It doesn't matter what terms are used to describe this series of responses; it is all overly negative to the point of redundancy.

No, they're not unreasonably far-gone in stupidity for using words you don't like. Both words imply the same thing. When people have negative opinions on a wad, they're going to use negative words. Maybe you're just overly sensitive to cursing?

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Originally Posted by Soulman Model CE

I believe every wad that can be ported or updated for the newest version that hasn't already had that done to it should at least be given an opportunity to be ported or updated, so people don't have to waste a bunch of HD space installing a bunch of significantly outdated releases just to use them.

200MB of HDD space is a small price to pay compared to the many hours of work needed to create a well-designed character.

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[23:56:36] <SM-MaxX> prisma illya is a gift to this impure earth and a shining beacon for all anime

what do you think would take up more space? Needing an extra copy of the game just to be able to play as older characters or being able to play as any previously available characters you choose to download with only one copy of the game?